ANGELA'S SYMPOSIUM 📖 Academic Study on Witchcraft, Paganism, esotericism, magick and the Occult

What assumptions are hidden beneath your magical practice? In The Philosophy of Magic, I explore the ideas that make magic possible in the first place: reality, spirits, deities, time, the self, will, language, ethics, and hidden knowledge. Across eleven live Sunday lectures, we will examine how different philosophies produce different forms of magic, and how understanding those foundations can ma...

Are scholars of magic trying to tell practitioners what to believe, or is this a misunderstanding of what academic research actually does? In this video, I explore the tension between the academic study of magic and lived spiritual practice. Drawing on debates around Wicca, Pagan origins, folk magic, historical evidence, and practitioner identity, I explain why scholarship can challenge historical...

Is Litha really an ancient Pagan festival, or is its history far more fascinating? In this episode, Dr Angela Puca explores the true history of Litha, the Summer Solstice, and Midsummer, separating historical evidence from modern Pagan myth-making. We look at Stonehenge, Bede, St John’s Eve, midsummer bonfires, folk magic, Wicca, and the creation of the modern Wheel of the Year. Rather than asking...

I keep being accused of using AI. I've even been accused, more than once, of being AI-generated. So I owe you something better than irritation: an actual explanation of where I stand. In this episode, I work through the real concerns: the scraping of artists' work, the environmental cost, algorithmic bias, the fear of job displacement, the worry about deskilling, and argue that every one o...

What does it mean to practise Wicca as an initiatory tradition today, and how does the legacy of figures such as Doreen Valiente continue to shape modern Witchcraft? In this livestream, I will be joined by Rufus Harrington, a Wiccan priest and long-standing initiate of the Craft, trustee of the Doreen Valiente Foundation, psychotherapist, and teacher of magical practice. Together, we will explore...

Lucid dreaming is often presented as a modern discovery, but traditions across the world have explored conscious dreaming for centuries. In this episode, I examine what neuroscience has actually shown about lucid dreams, how Tibetan dream yoga reframes the practice, and why magical and contemplative traditions may have understood aspects of the dreaming mind long before the sleep laboratory could...

What is an Esbat, and is it really an ancient full moon ritual? In this video, I trace the surprising history of the word Esbat, from its Old French meaning of “frolic” or “amusement” to its modern role in Wicca and contemporary Pagan witchcraft. I explore how Margaret Murray, Gerald Gardner, and Doreen Valiente helped transform a borrowed word into one of the best-known terms in the modern witchc...

What if everything you think you know about the Witches' Sabbath is wrong? The broomsticks, the Devil, the midnight orgies on remote mountaintops: this image has haunted the Western imagination for nearly six hundred years. But where did it actually come from? Was it an inquisitorial fantasy imposed from above? A distortion of real folk traditions of spirit-flight and nocturnal procession? A r...

Join me for a livestream interview with Cherry Parra, author of The Left Hand Path of Tarot, as we explore shadow, divination, witchcraft, and the transformative power of tarot through a left-hand path lens. Cherry Parra is a Mexican left-hand path witch residing in Mexico. She majored in Hispanic literature and has an innate and inherited connection to occult practices, with her magic stemming fr...

Join me for a livestream interview with Dr Gal Sofer on the complex histories of Solomonic magic, learned magical literature, and the transmission of esoteric knowledge across Jewish, Christian, and Arabic-speaking contexts. We will explore what it means to call a magical tradition Solomonic, how texts, images, and ritual technologies travelled across languages and cultures, and why the history of...

The Green Man was invented in 1939. Not the carvings. Those are real, they are medieval, and they have a fascinating Christian history. But the god, the named figure currently worshipped across contemporary Paganism as an ancient vegetation deity, was assembled in the twentieth century from a misread folklore article, a collapsed witch-cult theory, and a Jungian response to ecological anxiety. Thi...

Alchemy is far more than the myth of turning lead into gold. In this video, I explore how alchemy developed across Hellenistic Egypt, China, India, the Islamic world, and Europe as a rich tradition that united experiment, medicine, cosmology, and spiritual transformation. We look at major alchemical ideas, key historical figures, and the practices that shaped both occult traditions and the emergen...

What happens when magic moves through podcasts, digital media, and contemporary American culture? In this livestream, I’ll be joined by Heather Freeman, artist, scholar, and creator of Magic in the United States, the award-winning PRX podcast that explores the histories, practices, and cultural tensions surrounding magic, spirituality, and esotericism in the United States. Freeman is also a Profes...

What if everything you thought you knew about Solomonic magic was wrong? In this video, I explore Gal Sofer’s groundbreaking study of Solomonic magic and why it changes the way we understand the Key of Solomon, the Goetia, and the wider grimoire tradition. Far from being a single, unified body of ancient magical wisdom, these texts emerge as a fluid network shaped by scribes, translations, and cen...

What happens when you discover that the spiritual tradition you trusted may not be as ancient, authentic, or historically grounded as you were led to believe? In this video, I explore one of the most difficult questions in contemporary magic and Paganism: can a practice still be meaningful if its origin story falls apart? Drawing on examples such as Wicca, Stregheria, folk magic, and the academic...

Join me for a live conversation with Professor Wouter J. Hanegraaff on his recent book Esotericism in Western Culture: Counter-Normativity and Rejected Knowledge, published by Bloomsbury in 2025. In this interview, we will explore why esotericism should not be treated as a marginal curiosity, but as a central dimension of Western cultural history. The book is presented by both the publisher and Ha...

This lecture explores what religious cults are, how scholars study them, and the techniques high-control groups use to shape belief and behaviour. Drawing on Religious Studies, psychology, and contemporary case studies, I examine charisma, manipulation, coercive control, thought reform, and why people may find it difficult to leave. We also consider how similar dynamics can appear beyond religion,...

What if the world you experience is not reality itself, but a biologically constructed interface designed for survival rather than truth? In this episode, we explore the cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality and his Interface Theory of Perception, examining the provocative claim that evolution did not shape our senses to reveal the structure of the world as it is in itself....

What is shadow work, really? Is it therapy, initiation, political reclamation, or a commodified self-help trend? In this video, we trace the concept of the shadow from Carl Jung’s analytical psychology to its transformation within Western esotericism, ceremonial magic, Wicca, feminist spirituality, and Left-Hand Path traditions. Along the way, we explore how shadow work shifted from a clinical met...

Join us live for a conversation with Dr Shira Chess on the hidden entanglements between digital culture and the occult, inspired by her new book The Unseen Internet: Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse. From AI “demons” like Loab to meme magic, technopaganism, simulation theory, and the ritual logics of online life, Chess argues that the internet has always been shaped by esoteric frameworks...

This episode offers a critical examination of the question of “the most ancient forms of magic” by interrogating the category of magic itself as a historically contingent and analytically unstable concept. Rather than assuming magic as a universal or transhistorical phenomenon, the discussion situates ritual practices within their specific social, cosmological, and epistemic contexts, beginning wi...

Do Gods exist? Why is magic more effective when Gods and spirits are involved? What makes magic effective? How to influence people and political events? All of this and more in this discussion with Chaos Magician Peter J. Carroll. Check out Peter Carroll's website: https://specularium.org/ CONNECT & SUPPORT💖 MY COURSES 👩🏻‍🎓 https://drangelapuca.com/courses WEBSITE & NEWSLETTER 💌 h...

It's my Birthday! Join the celebration, ask your questions in the chat and watch me perform a Tantric Ritual! Surprise, surprise! What is it going to be? You'll find out by joining the academic fun. CONNECT & SUPPORT💖 MY COURSES 👩🏻‍🎓 https://drangelapuca.com/course WEBSITE & NEWSLETTER 💌 https://www.drangelapuca.com/#newsletter BOOK A TUTORING OR A LECTURE 📖https://drangelapu...

In this episode, I critically examine the widespread claim that quantum physics provides scientific proof for magic, esotericism, and spiritual practice. I explore what prominent scholars have actually proposed about possible links between quantum mechanics, consciousness, and interconnected phenomena, carefully situating these ideas within their proper academic and disciplinary contexts. I then a...

We examine the critical exchange between Ben Whitmore’s Trials of the Moon and Ronald Hutton’s responses to it, using the debate as a lens through which to explore contemporary tensions in the historiography of witchcraft and Pagan origins. Whitmore, writing from within the Pagan community, accuses Hutton of adopting an overly sceptical methodology and of applying uneven evidentiary standards that...